SCryPTA: A web-based platform for analyzing Small-Angle Scattering curves of lyotropic liquid crystals

Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is a powerful technique for the characterization of systems with highly ordered structures, such as liquid crystals and self-assembly systems. In the field of nanotechnology and nanomedicine, SAXS can be used to characterize the crystallographic properties of the crystal phase of lyotropic systems and nanoparticles with internal crystal phase, such as cubosomes, hexosomes and multi-lamellar vesicles. In this work, we introduce a new web platform named SCryPTA: Small Angle Scattering Crystallographic Peak Treatment and Analysis, capable of reading SAXS data and providing a comprehensive visualization of the scattering curve along with the calculation of important physical parameters, such as the lattice parameter of the crystal structure, the lipidic bilayer width, among others. Cubic, hexagonal and multilamellar scattering data had their crystallographic structure characterized in SCryPTA. So far, four different cubic structures, (Pn3m (Q224), Fd3m (Q227), Im3m (Q229), Ia3d (Q230)), the hexagonal phase and also multi-lamellar vesicle systems are described in the platform. We believe that SCryPTA may help researchers from several fields, since it has a user-friendly interface. The platform is available at: www.if.usp.br/scrypta.